VÁCLAV HAVEL

AUDIENCE

With: Karel Beseda, Radek Bár , director: Andrej Krob,  Stage design: Jan Dušek, Sound engineer: Tomáš Zika, Depressive song OBŘÍ BROSKEV, Co-project of : Divadla na tahu and  Divadla v patře Karlovy Vary

Havel used his experience from the short-term employment in the cellars of the Trutnov brewery to develop a tragic comedy. Its foundations are basically a dialogue between the writer Vaněk, rolling kegs in the brewery, and his supervisor, involuntary police informer Sládek. The times are strange, nothing seems to fit. Everyone is trying to survive. Some have strong ideas and principles they are trying to follow. Others, however, have learned to live flexibly without such “unnecessary” ideas and principles. Both of them know what being dirty means, yet each has a different way of coping with it. It is the overlay of the dialogue that represents irrevocable principles and the attitude of the writer Vaněk on one hand and on the other the vast possibility of circumventing such principles that makes Havel’s single-act piece a most topical play. On one side stands morality, on the other is immorality that accuses the moral man of being immoral. All the while it is the informer Sládek’s own conscience that hurts the piece’s sad character the most.